Traditionally, shoes, boots or skate boots are fabricated by shaping the footwear over a last. A last is a three-dimensional shape of the inside cavity of a boot or shoe, and which may be mounted upside down for ease of manipulation and assembly of the components making up the footwear. A pre-assembled fabric component is positioned over the last to be formed to the shape of the desire finished product. The pre-assembled component consists of various layers of fabric and/or leather material sewn and/or glued together, and sometimes reinforced with rigid components, which have the general configuration of the finished product but have not yet been shaped to the final form of the footwear. The rigidity and flexibility characteristics of the footwear are achieved by interposing the various layers of materials having suitable mechanical properties in specific regions of the pre-assembled component. An insole is positioned on the top portion of the last, which represents the inside bottom part of the footwear and the pre-assembled fabric component is positioned over the last. The fabric components are stretched over the last and pushed over the insole to conform to the specific shape of the last and then nailed or tacked, and glued to the insole to maintain the desired shape. Once the upper part of the footwear is completed, an outsole is glued over the preliminary assembly to finish the footwear. For skates, an accessory such as an ice runner holder or an in-line roller chassis is mounted to the outsole to complete the skate.
This type of process is extensively used in the shoemaking industry. It generates a good product but it has many disadvantages. For instance, the number of parts involved in the process can be staggering; a conventional ice skate for hockey may have some eighty parts to be assembled and shaped over the last. As a consequence, the manufacturing process is lengthy and complex. The nature of the assembly of part is inherently labor intensive and slow as there are many manual tasks to be performed and many steps are necessary to complete the footwear. The considerable number of elements to be assembled entails an increased risk of errors, particularly in the alignment of the various elements of the pre-assembled component. Also, the process of pushing and stretching the material over the last may not always provide a good alignment of the pre-assembled component over the insole. The accumulation of material between the insole and the outsole during the pulling and stretching step creates varations of the distance between the two parts, which are not desirable. The centering of the outsole with the formed pre-assembled component of the footwear become more difficult. The number of components involved in the process and the increased probability of misalignment of the various components, contribute at increasing the number of rejected shoes, boots or skates in the manufacturing process or at least, decrease the quality of the overall production. This traditional process of making footwear also requires several molds and cutting dies to produce all the parts necessary for making the footwear.
In an effort to reduce the number of components of footwear and specifically sports footwear like skiing and skating boot, these are increasingly made of a plastic molded shell and sometimes of a combination of a rigid with softer fabric components. U.S. Pat. No. 4,777,741 to Laurence discloses an article of footwear such as a shoe or skate, which comprises a molded exterior lower shell and a semi-rigid molded tongue portion to dose the footwear. U.S. Pat. No. 4,509,276 to Bourque discloses a skate boot made of a lower exterior molded rigid plastic portion and intermediate and upper portions made of pliable material to allow forward flexure and torsional flexibility in the ankle area. Finally U.S. Pat. No. 5,339,544 to Alberto discloses a footwear comprising a first component made of a single piece of molded synthetic material having a rear upper portion which extend from an insole, and a second component made of soft material having a front upper portion and a lining. The two components are connected together with the lining of the second component inserted inside the rear portion of the first component.
These designs effectively reduce the number of components utilized in the manufacturing process of a footwear or skate. However, the final product issued from any of these methods of making footwear, whether a shoe, a boot, or a skate, has the appearance of a plastic shell. Consumers are not particularly fond of the plastic shell look for footwear and show a preference to fabric or leather footwear product.
Thus there is a need in the industry for a method of making a footwear which controls the end shape and volume of the footwear and also utilizes fewer components and fewer steps than the traditional lasting method yet provides a final product that has the appearance of a footwear made with the traditional lasting method.